Turn your Kindle Fire into an Android 4.2 tablet

For a long time I've been a fan of N2A Cards, which sells a simple plug-and-play way to turn Barnes & Noble's Nook tablets into full-blown Android tablets. After all, if you've got good hardware, why not unlock its maximum potential?

Now Kindle owners can get in on the action. N2A's new N2Aos service will install Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) on your first- or second-generation Kindle Fire, replacing Amazon's heavily customized -- and, some would say, limited -- operating system with the real deal.

There are, of course, a few important considerations. The first is that because Fires have no microSD slot, you can't just pop in a card and dual-boot the way you can with a Nook. Installing Android proper means downloading an installer to your PC and wiping the Kindle OS -- and all your downloaded content along with it.

Consequently, you'll lose access to Amazon Prime streaming video -- not a big deal if you're not a Prime subscriber, but unfortunately there's no Amazon Instant Video app available for Android. You can restore your books via the Kindle app, but that's it.